Lead Software Engineer (Back-end) – EO Workflows (d/f/m) in London

Personio's intelligent HR platform helps small and medium-sized organizations unlock the power of people by making complicated, time‑consuming tasks simple and efficient. Our team of 1,500 Personios is building user‑friendly products that delight our 15,000+ customers and their 1.5 million employees. Ready to make an impact from day one?

The Role

This role requires 2 days per week in the office and is based in Munich or London. As a Lead Software Engineer in the EO Workflows team, you’ll play a key role in shaping how complex employment processes are built and experienced across Personio. You’ll work on high-impact, customer-facing workflow products, owning problems end-to-end and helping evolve a core platform used across the product.

What You’ll Do

• Own complex backend problem spaces by designing, building, and evolving scalable workflow systems that power approvals, reminders, and employment-related processes.
• Act as a product-focused engineer who deeply understands customer needs and actively shapes solutions rather than just executing predefined requirements.
• Lead technical design and implementation for large initiatives such as the new Employment Workflows project, including complex chained processes and long-running workflows.
• Drive system evolution and migration by improving and extending the new workflows-based approvals system and helping retire legacy solutions.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and other engineering teams to deliver cohesive end-to-end solutions.
• Support team-level technical excellence by contributing to design discussions, reviewing code, and helping maintain high engineering standards in a senior-heavy team.
• Take ownership of legacy and future systems including the planned rebuild of the onboarding product on top of the workflows platform.

What You Need To Succeed

• Strong backend engineering experience working on complex, distributed systems in production environments.
• High ownership and autonomy with a proven ability to independently drive technical and product decisions in ambiguous problem spaces.
• Product mindset with experience solving real customer problems and influencing solution direction.
• Solid system design skills and experience working with large codebases and evolving architectures.
• Experience with Java, Kotlin, or similar languages is helpful, but not mandatory.
• Comfort working in senior, high-trust teams where engineers own large surface areas and move multiple initiatives forward in parallel.
• Clear communication skills to explain technical decisions and collaborate effectively across disciplines.

Why Personio

Personio is an equal opportunities employer, committed to building an integrative culture where everyone feels welcomed and supported. We embrace uniqueness and understand that our diverse, values-driven culture makes us stronger. At Personio, we value in-person collaboration while also offering flexibility. This role is office-based, with 2 days per week required in your contracted office location. The remaining days can be worked from home or in the office if you prefer, plus 20 Flex Days per year to work remotely from other locations.

In addition, you’ll benefit from:

• A competitive reward package including salary, benefits, and pre-IPO equity
• 28 days of paid vacation, plus additional days after 2 and 4 years
• One fully paid Impact Day per year
• Generous family leave, mental health support, and sabbatical opportunities
• Regular team events, healthy office snacks, drinks, and weekly catered lunches